Raku Scripting Games

Originally published on 23 December 2008 by Patrick Michaud.

Are you interested in playing with Raku and Rakudo Perl but can’t figure out what to do? Here’s an idea that came up during Jon Allen’s talk “The Camel and the Snake” at YAPC::EU in Copenhagen.

For the past few years Microsoft has sponsored an annual Scripting Games competition, where they publish problems of varying difficulty levels to be solved using Perl, VBScript, Python, or other languages. I think it might be very interesting and useful to see people develop and publish Raku solutions to those problems.

So, here’s my idea: If you’re interested in learning more about Raku, select one or more problems from the Scripting Games website, develop solution(s) for them in Raku, and then publish your solutions somewhere along with a description of what you like, don’t like, learned, didn’t learn, etc. about Raku and Rakudo Perl.

One of the things we’ve observed from our experience with the November Wiki and other similar projects is that having “running code examples” and “real problems” is one of the best drivers for compiler and language development. I’m thinking that having people craft solutions to the scripting problems might do more of the same for Rakudo, while also sparking discussion and reflection on Raku itself.

So, where to start? Start by obtaining and building a copy of Rakudo, write and test your solutions to one or more problems, and post the results and your experiences somewhere for others to see. You can post to use-perl.github.io, your private blog, the rakusers mailing list, or anywhere else you find convenient. The point isn’t to develop a centralized repository of solutions (although we can do that), but rather to use the problems as a way to spread discussion, feedback, and experience with Raku.

I should also make it plain that people are very likely to run into some of Rakudo’s “rough edges” – places where we don’t yet implement key features or where they don’t work exactly as they’re supposed to. But to the designers and implementors that’s part of the point – we need to know where those rough edges are. Overall, I’m hoping that with the recent improvements to Rakudo there won’t be so many rough edges as to make the effort more disappointing than enjoyable. And there are lots of people eager to answer questions and help out on the rakusers mailing list, IRC #raku (irc.libera.chat), and other common forums. It’s all about learning and improving what we have with Raku.

I look forward to seeing your questions and answers.

Happy holidays!